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Kikyo
Setting Kikyo is a highly agglutinating language that is spoken in the peaceful island country which is its namesake. The word order of Kikyo is generally SOV, although this is only customary and word order really does not change the meaning of a sentence as it does in English. Kikyo has no known relatives, aside from the few "dialects" spoken in the Sea of Retōchi, which may in fact be totally different languages altogether. Phonology Consonants Vowels Phonotactics 90% of syllables in Kikyo go by the regular pattern of CV. However, some consonant clusters and CVC syllables are permissible. CVC syllables are only allowed when the ending consonant is either m, n, s, ŋ, or t. There are some notable CCV as well. The rule is that the only consonants that may procede another consonant, excluding the five in the last sentence, are r, l, t, d, and θ. These CCV mustn't ever start a word though as they should always have a vowel before them. Basic Grammar DECLENSION Kikyo nouns have gender, case, and number just like Latin and a couple other familiar European languages like German and to some minimal extent, French and English. However the genders are not masculine, feminine, or neuter, but animate and inanimate. Also unlike these familiar tongues, gender is not arbitrary in Kikyo at all. Animate nouns only refer to people, animals, and plants. Inanimate nouns are everything else; nonliving things, abstract concepts, etc. There are four numbers in Kikyo: singular which is the same in Latin and English; '''dual '''which used to exist in those two languages, but ceased to later on. The dual basically menas "two -s" or "a pair/couple of -s"; '''paucal '''which has not existed in either language as far I know, has two distinct meanings depending on whether or not an ordinal number is found before it. If there is one, then this just functions like the partitive in Finnish and it is a numbered plurals (e.g. "two dogs", "three cats", etc.). If there isn't one though, then the paucal instead means "few" or "some"; and finally '''plural '''which is the exact same in English, except for the fact that it cannot be numbered. Lastly there is the problem of cases. English has a maximum of three cases, Latin has five (or six if you count the vocative), and Finnish has 15. Kikyo, on the other hand, has ? different cases! In order to make them a little less frightening, the ? are divided into ? different categories depending on what their meanings are. The most basic category is called the grammatical case group and it is perhaps the most important as it encompasses the most primal of cases, namely the absolutive, ergative, genitive, dative, benefactive, prolative, and the pertingent. Next is the marginal category which includes the essive, exessive, translative, comitative, instrumental, and abessive cases. Last, but certainly not least, are the locative cases, of which over twenty are in commmon usage. Examples of these are the adessive, ablative, inessive, and the superlative (not the degree of adjectives!). Dictionary Example text Category:Languages Category:FFD